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Museum restaurants: The Modern, MoMA, New York

I was running a bit behind in my museum restaurant review series, so here you go with some pictures from The Modern, the ground-floor restaurant at the MoMA in New York.

First, make a reservation: the place is crowded and you may have to wait half an hour or more even to grab a quick lunch in the Bar Room. The food, by Alsatian chef Gabriel Kreuther, is truly excellent; liverwurst, foie gras, country sausage, goat cheese and duck are well balanced by tuna tartare, scallops and oysters.

Yet, after the crowd-pleasing Sol LeWitt mural panels at the entrance, the interior of the restaurant is largely uninspiring – a puzzle, given that the rest of the museum is an architectural marvel, with many surprising vistas enlivening even the casual visitor’s walk.

And while I’m a fan of creative flower arrangements (the best I’ve ever seen? those at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, a few years ago), I couldn’t care much for the bamboo-topped constructions in the dining room at the Modern.